Investing in Catch

We’re excited to invest in Catch, a company helping define the future of work.

Freelancing is an important and growing part of the future of work both near term and long. According to Morgan Stanley, freelancers make up 35% of the US workforce today (about 56m workers) and could grow to 50% in the next 10 years. A core reason for this growth is that the freelance lifestyle is appealing to millennials. It’s easy to pick up primary or secondary work through services like Upwork, Uber, etc. Being an entrepreneur also carries a certain type of romanticism.

The move to freelance labor doesn’t come without concerns from workers. A 2018 study by Upwork and the Freelancers Union revealed the following:

63% of freelancers said they feel nervous about what they have to manage (taxes, financials, insurance, etc.).

The biggest concern for freelancers is access to affordable healthcare (22% of respondents). Saving for retirement was tied for second (19% of respondents).

Catch is building the platform to address these concerns and give freelancers the structure and security of benefits more commonly found in traditional work situations. Catch joins tax preparedness (savings), retirement, and health insurance into a single system to create a safety net that travels with the freelancer wherever and however they choose to apply their labor.

As millennials make up a larger part of the workforce overall and embrace the freelance work style, these younger workers expect services like Catch to deliver a certain type of experience. These users expect products to be intuitive, pricing to be fair, and brands that they’re proud to be associated with. Just as Robinhood and Circle cracked this code for finance products tailored to millennial investors, Catch can do the same for millennial freelancers.

Disclaimer: We actively write about the themes in which we invest or may invest: virtual reality, augmented reality, artificial intelligence, and robotics. From time to time, we may write about companies that are in our portfolio. As managers of the portfolio, we may earn carried interest, management fees or other compensation from such portfolio. Content on this site including opinions on specific themes in technology, market estimates, and estimates and commentary regarding publicly traded or private companies is not intended for use in making any investment decisions and provided solely for informational purposes. We hold no obligation to update any of our projections and the content on this site should not be relied upon. We express no warranties about any estimates or opinions we make.